(CNN) – Astronomers have discovered a powerful radio wave laser called megamaser in space.
This megasometer has broken a record of 5 billion light-years from Earth, the most unprecedented distance ever.
The light from this space laser traveled 58,000 trillion kilometers and reached our planet.
An international team of astronomers led by researcher Marcin Glowacki observed this light through the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomical Observatory. (MeerKAT stands for Karoo Array Telescope, preceded by the African word “more”)
An artist’s chart shows how the MeerKAT telescope detected a megasometer 5 billion light-years away.
Clovacki is a research partner at the International Radio Astronomy Research Center at Curtin University in Australia.
Megamasers are formed when two galaxies collide with each other. Clovacki said it was the first hydroxyl megamaser to be noticed by MeerKAT.
In hydroxyl, a chemical group consisting of one hydrogen and one oxygen atom can be found within galaxies.
“When galaxies collide, the gas in them becomes very dense and stimulates concentrated beams of light,” Klovaki explained in a statement.
The research team named the copy of the laser, which means “great leader” in Isisulu, the Pandu language of the Zulus in South Africa.
Astronomers discovered Megamasar on the first night of the study, which lasted more than 3,000 hours with MeerKAT.
“Through only one night’s observations, it’s interesting that we’ve found a record-breaking megamacer,” Clovacki said. “It shows how good the telescope is.”
The research team continues to use MeerKAT to scrutinize narrow areas of the sky and look for the same features found on the megameter. It can provide additional information about the evolution of the universe.
“We plan to follow up with Megamasar and hope to make many more discoveries,” Clovacki said.
The MeerKAT Telescope, located in the Karu region of South Africa, covers a range of 64 radio antennas and has been in operation since July 2018. The powerful telescope is sensitive to weak radio light.
Meergate is the forerunner of the SKA telescope, built in both South Africa and Australia, the line of square kilometers across the continent.
Thousands of satellite feeds and a million low-frequency antennas will be on the line in an effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope.
Although these antennas and disks are located in different parts of the world, they together form a telescope with an observation surface of more than 1 square kilometer. In this way, astronomers can explore the entire sky much faster than other telescopes.
